Chapter 4 - The Rules of the Boardroom
The penthouse kitchen at 3:00 AM looked less like a domestic space and more like the wardroom of a nuclear submarine.
Maria had brewed a pot of bitter espresso that tasted like burnt soil, and Emily sat at the marble island, her hands wrapped around the warm ceramic mug. Siri was curled tightly against her legs, his massive chest rising and falling in a steady, rhythmic cadence that grounded her against the rising panic in her chest.
"You should sleep," a voice said from the doorway.
Enzo stood there in his shirtsleeves, his tie gone, the top two buttons of his white shirt undone. Without the severe tailoring of his jacket, he looked younger—perhaps mid-forties—but the dangerous, coiled energy around him hadn't diminished by a fraction.
"I can't sleep," Emily said honestly. "Every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing that photograph of my uncle. And I keep wondering if the people who did that are looking for me, too."
"They aren't looking for you because they don't know you're connected to him," Enzo said, walking over to the counter and pouring himself a cup of the bitter coffee. He didn't flinch as Siri’s ear twitched in his direction. "Arthur Marcus was a ghost. He lived off the books, owed money to half the bookmakers in Queens, and kept his family at a very safe distance. As far as the syndicate is concerned, you're just an agency catering girl who had a very strange evening."
"An agency catering girl who is currently harboring a syndicate boss's multi-million-dollar war dog," Emily pointed out with a dry, humorless smile.
"True." Enzo leaned against the counter, sipping his espresso. "Which brings us to the operational problem of what to do with you."
Emily’s spine stiffened. "Are you firing me? Or are you planning to lock me in the guest suite until you figure out how to tie up loose ends?"
"Neither," Enzo said calmly. "If I lock you in the guest suite, Brutus—or Siri, as you insist on calling him—will chew through three feet of reinforced drywall to find you. And if I fire you and send you back to Queens, you'll be dead within forty-eight hours because the men who killed your uncle are currently cleaning out his apartment looking for the ledger he stole from Vanguard Global."
Emily set her mug down with a sharp clack. "He had a ledger?"
"Arthur wasn't just a petty thief," Enzo explained, his voice dropping into a register of cold professional contempt. "He was a middle-man for a faction within my own organization—men who wanted to bypass the traditional union structures and set up independent smuggling routes for synthetic narcotics. Your uncle kept records of every bribe, every dock supervisor, and every offshore account."
"And he hid it," Emily realized, the pieces clicking together with terrifying clarity.
"He hid it somewhere safe," Enzo agreed. "Or he gave it to someone he trusted." Enzo’s dark eyes fixed on her with unsettling precision. "Did he ever visit you at your apartment? Did he leave anything behind? A box, a key, an old radio?"
Emily shook her head slowly. "He hadn't visited us in three years. The last time I saw him was at my father's funeral, and he smelled like stale beer and cheap cologne. He didn't leave anything except a pile of debt."
Siri suddenly lifted his head, his ears flattening against his skull. A low, vibrating hum began to build in the back of his throat.
Enzo straightened up instantly, his hand dropping to his side with the practiced smoothness of a man who lived in permanent crossfire. "Maria," he called out softly toward the service corridor.
May you like
The older housekeeper appeared in an instant, her face pale. "The security monitors on the ground floor," Enzo said, his voice cold as ice. "What do they show?"
"Nothing, sir," Maria whispered, trembling. "The cameras... they just went loop-feed. All of them."
